Female soldiers and the back of the bus

In the last few days, I realized that in those old newspapers, one of the key words, apart from the name of freed soldier Gilad Schalit or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is women.

By ELIEZER YAARI
Bibi netanyahu (photo credit: JPost Staff)
Bibi netanyahu
(photo credit: JPost Staff)
Every so often, I think about how the Google algorithm is changing politics. I’m thinking about it not because I can no longer find a juicy subject to chew on, or because every so often I also want to look sophisticated and up-to-date, and write the smashing column about how the tweets can change history.
Not really.
I think about it because every so often my news-oriented mind is forced to work in the same way the Big G system does. After all – it was created by human beings.
In the last few days, as i was trying to sort out what should be kept at home before I recycle the tons of paper that I accumulated all around my living room during the high holidays, i realized that in those old newspapers, one of the key words, apart from the name of freed soldier Gilad Schalit or prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is women.
If you want to be more precise, you should say it is “women in the military,” and if you join the search at this very moment and want to reach the right result on the first click, you should try “gender segregation in Jerusalem and the Israeli army.” if you are Googling these words, your computer will be covered with a new rash, the symptom of a disease, which we once thought that Israel had inoculated itself against so many years ago.
To my great sorrow I must admit that we were probably wrong.
And if you think in the same paradigms that once controlled our life, and you say to yourself that “time will be the best vaccine for diseases of the past,” you will soon realize that it is totally unclear.
It is quite possible that we are enjoying the last days of spring, as women’s voices as well as their presence have become a sin that is very high on the list of those rabbis who are writing the recipe for the future.
I assume that for those of you who are the real guardians of human rights as well as women’s rights, these kinds of stories make you take to the streets right away. Let me warn you before you do that: This round of segregation against women might be only an excuse for a move that is much more strategic and touches on all the basic assumptions of civic democracy. But before I try to justify my assumption, let me share with you selected stories from recent days.
The first one relates to a report that “female soldiers leave an IDF event after being ordered to sit in a separate section.” The report adds that “the commanders of the women soldiers decided to have them board buses and leave the Simchat Torah party after some soldiers objected to being directed to a separate area cut off from the main event.”
This happened in the same IDF that has made equality of women into a legend that should have inspired the rest of the world. They are pilots, tank commanders, infantry instructors and top intelligence experts, but God forbid if they dance and sing with men at a public event. It happens in the same IDF that has become unusually efficient in announcing that five women are now in the senior class of the Air Force Academy, a number never witnessed before.
You see, in this country of contradictions, having a woman fighter pilot is totally fine as long as she does not sing in public and is ready to move to the back seats of the bus and allow men to sit in the front. This will make her a real kosher young woman.
It is also interesting to examine the commanders’ reactions to the incident: the low ranks left the party and leaked the story to the press. However, the top commanders are much more concerned about their political connections, and they weigh their reactions in a very complex profit-and-loss equation.
The second story tells us that a Jerusalem City Council member was fired from the municipal coalition after petitioning the courts against gender segregation. Mayor Nir Barkat justified the move saying that the dismissal of council member Rahel Azaria was a result of lack of loyalty to City Council policy. City Hall had approved the right of the residents of the ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim quarter in Jerusalem to segregate men from women in the neighborhood, and allow the erection of a canvas barrier on the main street during the Sukkot holiday. The Supreme Court ruled that the segregation was not legal but allowed it to remain partly in effect this year, although declaring that segregation in public spaces is illegal and immoral. Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch noted that the matter “is critical,” but allowed the segregation to continue for “just a few more days.”
The fact of the matter is that in a country without a constitution, where the gaps between the different communities are so deep, the issue is indeed critical. The facts on the ground are those that create the public atmosphere and establish the precedents that shape public life and democracy in Israel. This morning, when I wrote this column, I read in all the Israeli newspapers and on major websites that gender segregation has also raised a storm in Brooklyn, New York. Apparently women who take bus number 110 between Boro Park and Williamsburg have to sit in the back, too.
The impact of such a story is: You see, we are not Neanderthals, we are not bringing the Middle Ages back to our life through the buses’ back door, or the IDF’s public events. What we are doing is exactly what they do in America, and you don’t want to tell me that America is going back to the Dark Ages of segregation of any kind, do you? Every so often we have another round of battles of this kind.
This time it seems that the conflict is different: it is not about a partition in Mea Shearim, it is not even about gender segregation in the army. It is about who will make the calls in our society. Will it be the secular Supreme Court or the ultra-Orthodox rabbis? Who will decide what is right and what is wrong when the big questions are on the table? Will it be the state, the civic constitutional structure that derives its power from civic laws and the general public, or will it be the rabbinical establishment? What about the ultimate questions of what the future holds for us, such as the future of Israeli political control of the West Bank.
Will a political decision on the issue be challenged by a “divine” law that prevents any action, unless permission is received by God’s representatives on the ground? It is a purely political struggle, one in which the women, as always, are just a pawn on the big chess board that angry men are trying to dominate. These men are trying to achieve supremacy.
Ultimately, all of us will have to pay heavily in the future.